Sensory qualities are objective properties; indeed, on the evidence, they are physical properties. However, what makes a physical property the sensory quality it is is its relationship to sensory experiences of perceivers. For instance, the redness of a surface is a physical property of the surface; what makes that physical property surface red is the fact that it disposes surfaces to look red to appropriate visual perceivers in appropriate viewing circumstances. What it is like for something to look red—that is, (...) the actual phenomenal character of visual experiences as of something red—is also a physical property; on the evidence, it is a physical property of the brain. (shrink)

Fue Baudelaire quien advirtió que, en el juguete, podemos encontrar materia de reflexión. En un texto publicado en el Monde Littéraire del 17 de abril de 1853 con el título de “Moral del juguete”, cuenta la visita hecha siendo niño a casa de Mme. Panckoucke: Me tomó de la mano y cruzamos así juntos varias habitaciones; después abrió la puerta de una estancia que me ofreció un espectáculo extraordinario y verdaderamente fabuloso. Los muros no eran yavisibles hasta tal punto estaban (...) recubiertos de juguetes. El desván desaparecía bajo una floritura de juguetes que colgaban como estalactitas maravillosas. El piso dejaba apenas un pequeño paso sobre el que posar los pies… Es a causa de esta aventura si no puedo detenerme delante de una tienda de juguetes y recorrer con la mirada la inextricable muchedumbre de sus formas extrañas y de sus colores dispares, sin pensar en la señora vestida de terciopelo y de pieles, que se me a apareció como el Hada del juguete. (shrink)

There is widespread view among numerous aestheticians that aesthetic and value properties are response-dependent. According to some philosophers the dependence has a rich and multilayered structure: value qualities (e.g. beauty) depend on our response to aesthetic properties (e.g. harmonious), which in turn depend on our response to a pattern of primary and secondary qualities (shapes and colors). Secondary qualities are themselves response-dependent. The basic dependence relation is thus iterated. The resulting structure is one of iterated response-dependence. The integral part (...) of such a position is a relational view, best captured by the response-dispositional analysis: My states of being appeared to magnificently in front of a painting manifests the disposition of painting to induce such experience in the normal viewer.There are two main objections against the dispositional analysis: (1) argument from circularity and (2) argument from introducing two kinds of quality, one categorical, for experiential states, and one dispositional for objects. In this paper we will suggest the arguments against second objection. (shrink)

“Rethinking of philosophy to-day”, from my point of view, means new understanding of the “basic truths” of philosophy in their use in the analysis of actual social problems of the modern swiftly changing world. One of such actual problems is the problem of a nation that is the most stable social unit, representing a unity of a human and social being, and in this context a human being is understood as a national human being. Only in such a role becomes (...) an element of a social structure of a society. It is not correct to oppose the culture, common to all humanity, and the concrete culture of an individual that is national culture. The essence of culture – the totality of spiritual values - is in its penetration from the culture common to humanity, into the national culture and inversely. There are two tendencies in the world development to-day: integration, mainly in the sphere of economics, and disintegration in national-state sphere, that not always takes place in a peaceful form. It is important to find scientifically based answers to the following questions: whether national traits of social life will always be the source of tension and conflicts or they will bring bright, original vital colors into the picture of a globalized world? In general, can explosive social elements be always formed in the socio-ethnic structure of a society? The answers to these questions are formulated in the sphere of natiology - in the interdisciplinary sphere ofscientific knowledge about a nation, that realizes an important function of natiological education and upbringing. (shrink)

There is a whole discussion around the genuine/non genuine appurtenance of the Fractal Art to the Art (Ken Keller, Tad Boniecki, Noel Huntley a.o.). Fractal Art is a new way to manipulate shapes, colors and light. It is a subclass of the visual digital art that could describe as that art form produced using a computer (PC, Mac), fractal and graphical software and output devices (monitors, plotters, printers etc.) or using fractal rules and traditional painting techniques (example: Pollock) as (...) essential tools in the creative process. It is crucial to understand that the use of a computer is not a sine qua non condition, even most of the fractal artworks were digitally realized. Fractal Art is an experimental art, engaging in a new way the relations between Creator and Work. Fractal Art has a genuine equilibrium between “pragmatic” and “theoretic”. It is rather about “discovering” than “manufacturing”, rather “evocation” than “mimesis”. The conclusion has to be: Fractal Art is a genuine art form. (shrink)

In her introduction to this collection, Tymieniecka presents her phenomenology of life - the leitmotif of the three-volume anniversary publication of Analecta Husserliana - as something that stands out from preceding historical attempts to investigate life in an 'integral' or 'scientific' way. After an incubation lasting throughout the 2000 years of Occidental philosophy, this scientific phenomenology/philosophy of life at last uncovers the entire area of the 'inner workings of Nature', exposing the way in which the 'sufficient reason' and the 'ground' (...) of beingness as such crystallise out of the 'onto poietic' process. This onto-poietic process, continuing as it does in the human creative condition, also reveals the authentic genius of the works of the human spirit. This new and original philosophy, free of fallacious simplifications, speculations and reductionism, opens up a basic starting point for all philosophy. Life, 'the theme of our times', at last receives a profound philosophical treatment. (shrink)

Wild Ideas is a collection of essays that brings a fresh and refreshing perspective to the wilderness paradoxically at the center of our civilization.

This collection is the final volume of a four book survey of the state of phenomenology fifty years after the death of Edmund Husserl. Its publication represents a landmark in the comprehensive treatment of contemporary phenomenology in all its vastness and richness. The diversity of the issues raised here is dazzling, but the main themes of Husserl's thought are all either explicitly treated, or else they underlie the ingenious approaches found here. Time, historicity, intentionality, eidos, meaning, possibility/reality, and teleology are (...) the main concerns of this collection devoted to studies in aesthetics, metaphysics and literary interpretation, written by such authors as, among others, R. Cobb-Stevens, C. Moreno Marquez, J. Swiecimski, Sitansu Ray and M. Kronegger. These original studies of phenomenological aesthetics and literary theory by scholars from all parts of the world were gathered by the World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learn ing during the year 1988/89 during its assessment of the phenomeno logical movement, fifty years after Husserl's death. IX A -T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XXXVII, ix. (shrink)

orbit and far beyond it. Indeed, the immense, painstaking, indefatigable and ever-improving effort of Husserl to find ever-deeper and more reliable foundations for the philosophical enterprise (as well as his constant critical re-thinking and perfecting of the approach and so called "method" in order to perform this task and thus cover in this source-excavation an ever more far-reaching groundwork) stands out and maintains itself as an inepuisable reservoir for philosophical reflec tion in which all the above-mentioned work has either its (...) core or its source. In fact, in his undertaking to re-think the entire philosophical enterprise as such and to recreate philosophy upon what he sought to be at least a satisfactorily legitimated basis, Husserl, through his already systematised and "authorized" work, and his courses, and later on in his spontaneous reflection (which did not find its way into a definitive corpus but was nevertheless sufficiently coherent with his previously established body of thought to be considered a continuation of it), uncovers perspectives upon the universe of man and projects their new philosophical thematisation that brings together all the attempts by philosophers (e. g., Merleau-Ponty, who drew upon this material and found there his own inspiration) who succeeded him with foundational intentions; it also gives a core of philosophical ideas and insights for the youngergenerationofphilosophers today. (shrink)

This paper illustrates what a philosophical and a logical investigation of colors amounts to in contrast to other kinds of color analysis such as physical, physiological, chemical, psychological or cultural analysis of colors. Neither a philosophical nor a logical analysis of colors is concerned with specific aspects of colors. Rather, these kinds of color analysis are concerned with what one might call “logical foundations of color theory”. I will illustrate this first by considering philosophical and then (...) logical analysis of colors. (shrink)

Joshua Gert presents an original account of color properties, and of our perception of them. He employs a general philosophical strategy - neo-pragmatism - which challenges an assumption made by virtually all other theories of color: he argues that colors are primitive properties of objects, irreducible to physical or dispositional properties.

Hering’s opponent-colors theory suggests that our color sensations are produced by three mechanisms: a red–green mechanism, a yellow–blue mechanism, and a white–black mechanism. The first two mechanisms give rise to our sensations of hued colors; the third mechanism gives rise to our sensations of hueless colors. Noticeably, whereas the pair of colors produced by each of the hued mechanisms do not mix to yield a phenomenal intermediate (i.e., there are no greenish reds, reddish greens, yellowish blues, (...) or bluish yellows), the colors produced by the hueless mechanism, white and black, do have a phenomenal intermediate—gray. This different behavior of the white–black mechanism poses a problem for Hering’s theory. Several attempts to fix this problem have been suggested. This paper focuses on the suggestion made by Paul Heggelund a century after Hering proposed his theory. In Heggelund’s amendment of Hering’s theory, the hueless colors are not confined to the one-dimensional gamut between black and white, but rather require two components for their full description: a light–dark (or luminous–black) component, where light and dark are mutually exclusive sensations, and a white component, which doesn’t have an opponent counterpart. Here I show that although Heggelund’s theory indeed provides a solution to the problem that the hueless colors pose to Hering’s theory, it is not self-consistent. I go on to revise Heggelund’s theory to obtain a consistent opponent-colors theory. (shrink)

When we open our eyes, the world seems full of colored opaque objects, light sources, and transparent volumes. One historically popular view, _eliminativism_, is that the world is not in this respect as it appears to be: nothing has any color. Color _realism_, the denial of eliminativism, comes in three mutually exclusive varieties, which may be taken to exhaust the space of plausible realist theories. Acccording to _dispositionalism_, colors are _psychological_ dispositions: dispositions to produce certain kinds of visual experiences. (...) According to both _primitivism_ and _physicalism_, colors are not psychological dispositions; they differ in that primitivism says that no reductive analysis of the colors is possible, whereas physicalism says that they are physical properties. This paper is a defense of physicalism about color. (shrink)

According to color realism, object colors are mind-independent properties that cover surfaces or permeate volumes of objects. In recent years, some color scientists and a growing number of philosophers have opposed this view on the grounds that realism about color cannot accommodate the apparent unitary/binary structure of the hues. For example, Larry Hardin asserts, the unitary-binary structure of the colors as we experience them corresponds to no known physical structure lying outside nervous systems that is causally involved in (...) the perception of color. This makes it very difficult to subscribe to a color realism that is supposed to be about red, green, blue, black, and white—that is, the colors with which we are perceptually acquainted.1 Similarly, Evan Thompson says. (shrink)

This article conceptualizes contemporary geopolitical violence in the Arctic through a semiotic register. Different living beings perceive different things, and these differences amount to different worlds, not merely different worldviews. Building on Eduardo Kohn’s reading of the semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce, and theorists of biosemiotics and ecosemiotics, the article analyses how signs in and between living organisms and their environments are political matters of life and death. Via the themes of invisibility, colors, and snow, the article traces semiotic (...) relations between different living beings and their Arctic ecologies to weave a semiotic understanding of contemporary geopolitical violence in the Arctic and the role of climate change therein. The article defines the violence of climate change as a violence of not being able to recognize oneself, and builds on Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s concept of multinaturalism to explain what it means that one world ruins other worlds. (shrink)

In Rediscovering Colors: A Study in Pollyanna Realism, Michael Watkins endorses the Moorean view that colors are simple, non-reducible, properties of objects. Consequently, Watkins breaks from what has become the received view that either colors are reducible to certain properties of interest to science, or else nothing is really colored. What is novel about the work is that Watkins, unlike other Mooreans, takes seriously the metaphysics of colors. Consequently, Watkins provides an account of what colors (...) are, how they are related to the physical properties on which they supervene, and how colors can be causally efficacious without the threat of causal overdetermination. Along the way, he provides novel accounts of normal conditions and non-human color properties. The book will be of interest to any metaphysician and philosopher of mind interested in colors and color perception. (shrink)

The sensory colors that figure in visual perceptual experience are either properties of the object of consciousness (naïve realism, sense-data theory), or properties of the subject of consciousness (adverbialism) (Section 1). I consider an argument suggested by the work of A. D. Smith that the existence of certain kinds of perceptual constancies shows that adverbialism is correct, for only adverbialism can account for such constancies (Section 3). I respond on behalf of the naïve realist that naïve realism is compatible (...) with the existence of such constancies, so long as naïve realism adopts the view that sensory colors are relational properties of physical objects, not intrinsic properties (Section 4). In other words, the naïve realist should adopt the theory of appearing (Section 5). (shrink)

A recent report by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention in cooperation with the Swedish Security Service shows that the Internet has been extensively used to spread propaganda by proponents of violent political extremism, characterized by a worldview painted in black and white, an anti-democratic viewpoint, and intolerance towards persons with opposing ideas. We provide five arguments suggesting that philosophical dialogue with young persons would be beneficial to their acquisition of insights, attitudes and thinking tools for encountering such propaganda. (...) The arguments are based on stated requirements for problem solutions given by experts in violent political extremism, recent research about the effects of philosophical dialogue in young persons’ thinking skills, and parts of the basic theoretical framework of Philosophy for Children. Philosophical dialogues seem a promising way for young people to achieve a stronger democratic awareness and a more tenacious resistance against extremist views online. (shrink)

There is no doubt that colors play a crucial role in the fine arts. Both the phenomenology and the interpretation of paintings, photographs, and films change dramatically depending on the colors that are used to compose them. A black and white reproduction of a Rothko painting loses one of the central traits of the work. It is similarly a crucial aesthetic choice by photographers or filmmakers to have their work shot in color or in black and white. This (...) choice will constrain the phenomenology of the resulting photographs and films and how viewers will eventually perceive and interpret them. Less clear, however, is the significance, the meaning of colors in the fine arts. In this paper, I argue that colors have no absolute meaning in the arts, but the effect they are supposed to engender in viewers, the significance that colors have in various pieces, will change as we consider different works, even, in some cases, if they belong to the same period. Despite the relatively uniform phenomenology of colors, their meaning varies dramatically in painting, photographs, and films. This makes colors behave in far more conventional ways, that is, representing via conventional codes rather than via recognitional prompts, than we may initially think in light of how relatively stable color phenomenology tends to be. It is, thus, important to distinguish the way colors represent from the way they are present in these various media. And by examining the implications of this distinction, I argue, we obtain a suggestive framework to examine colors in the fine arts. To support this conclusion I examine the meaning and significance of colors in selected paintings, photographs, and films, identifying some similarities but particularly several differences among various works. (shrink)

Double dissociations between perceivable colors and physical properties of colored objects have led many philosophers to endorse relationalist accounts of color. I argue that there are analogous double dissociations between attitudes of belief—the beliefs that people attribute to each other in everyday life—and intrinsic cognitive states of belief—the beliefs that some cognitive scientists posit as cogs in cognitive systems—pitched at every level of psychological explanation. These dissociations provide good reason to refrain from conflating attitudes of belief with intrinsic cognitive (...) states of belief. I suggest that interpretivism provides an attractive account of the former. Like colors, attitudes of belief evolved to be ecological signifiers, not cogs in cognitive systems. (shrink)

Arguments from perceptual variation challenge the view that colors are objective properties of objects, properties that objects have independent of how they are perceived. This paper attempts, first, to diagnose one central reason why arguments from perceptual variation seem especially challenging for objectivists about color. Second, we offer a response to this challenge, claiming that once we focus on determinate colors rather than the determinables they determine, a response to arguments from perceptual variation becomes apparent. Third, our nominal (...) opponents are relationalist (like Cohen in The red and the real: an essay on color ontology, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009) and we will argue that the main argument for rejecting objectivism commits the relationalist to a position that is more radical than the one he would wish to endorse. Fourth, we suggest that insight into which properties could be relational may be found by looking to our best scientific theories. (shrink)

I defend a version of color subjectivism — that colors are sortals for certain neural events — by arguing against a sophisticated form of color objectivism and by showing how a subjectivist can legitimately explain the phenomenal fact that colors seem to be properties of external objects.

Regier, Kay, and Khetarpal report the results of computer simulations that cluster color stimuli on the basis of their coordinates in CIELAB space, one of two commonly used perceptual color spaces. Regier and coauthors find partitions of those stimuli that are strikingly similar to the way actual color lexicons partition color space. They do not argue for the custom-made clustering method used in their simulations, nor for the assumption of CIELAB space. The present paper aims to answer the question to (...) what extent their computational results depend on these assumptions. It does this by applying a great variety of known clustering methods to Regier et al.’s stimuli, and by assuming not only CIELAB space but also CIELUV space, the other main color space. (shrink)

Musica-Colore-Tratto ©· un percorso epistemologico, una volont©¿ di tentare di comprendere la musica non come realt©¿ a s©♭ stante, bens©Ơ in relazione ad altre fonti del sapere che, in qualche modo, le si possano affiancare: sia per la ricerca di un kantiano tutto-insieme-connesso, sia per una pretesa hegeliana di un pensiero umano tricotomico. La volont©¿ di chi scrive ©· quella di far trasparire un'involontaria logica che permea l'idea umana generale (a prescindere da ci©ø in cui essa si cimenti) e di (...) ribadire il forte teleo℗Ưlogismo nel quale essa trova i suoi limiti. Pittori o litografi come Kandinsky o Escher ne erano ben consci, se arrivarono, tra i loro aforismi, ad affermare che "il colore ©· come la musica", o "adoriamo il caos perch©♭ amiamo produrre l'ordine". [Testo dell'editore]. (shrink)

Over the past few decades, the dominant approach to explaining intentionality has been a naturalistic approach, one appealing only to non-mental ingredients condoned by the natural sciences. Karen Neander’s A Mark of the Mental (2017) is the latest installment in the naturalist project, proposing a detailed and systematic theory of intentionality that combines aspects of several naturalistic approaches, invoking causal relations, teleological functions, and relations of second-order similarity. In this paper, we consider the case of perceptual representations of colors, (...) which is a challenging case for Neander’s theory. This case will brings out a general methodological concern with Neander’s and other naturalistic theories: these theories generally rest on the assumption that the mental intentionality we are acquainted with in everyday life—the phenomenon exhibited by desires for cups of coffee, perceptual experiences of dogs playing in yards, and thoughts about the weather—is the very same kind of phenomenon that cognitive science studies under labels such as “mental representation” and, in some cases, “information processing.” This assumption is dubious, as the case of Neander’s theory illustrates. (shrink)

This article, based on original research from 57 villages in four provinces from North and East India, sheds light on a hitherto unexplored gendered impact of colorism in facilitating noncustomary cross-region marriage migrations in India. Within socioeconomically marginalized groups from India’s development peripheries, the hegemonic construct of fairness as “capital” conjoins with both regressive patriarchal gender norms governing marriage and female sexuality and the monetization of social relations, through dowry, to foreclose local marriage options for darker-hued women. This dispossession of (...) matrimonial choice forces women to “voluntarily” accept marriage proposals from North Indian bachelors, who are themselves faced with a bride shortage in their own regions due to skewed sex ratios. These marriages condemn cross-region brides to new forms of gender subordination and skin-tone discrimination within the intimacy of their marriages, and in everyday relations with conjugal families, kin, and rural communities. Because of colorism, cross-region brides are exposed to caste-discriminatory exclusions and ethnocentric prejudice. Dark-skin shaming is a strategic ideological weapon employed to extract more labor from them. The article extends global scholarly discussion on the role of colorism in articulating new forms of gendered violence in dark-complexioned, poor rural women’s lives. (shrink)

It is standard to suppose that, whether or not they are actually instantiated in our environment, colors are properties. Presumably those who are convinced of this thesis are convinced because they think that’s how we see colors--how visual experience represents them. I argue, in contrast, that there are cases of illusory color perception in which it is more plausible to suppose colors are represented as kinds of stuff or substance rather than as properties. I then show how (...) to extend this result to support the conclusion that colors are always represented in vision as kinds of stuff rather than as properties. In a concluding section, I consider further ways to explore and test the “stuff theory” of visual color representation. I also extract a moral from this investigation about our ability to draw accurate conclusions about our conscious visual experience. (shrink)

Determinants of synesthetic color choice for the Japanese logographic script, Kanji, were studied. The study investigated how synesthetic colors for Kanji characters, which are usually acquired later in life than other types of graphemes in Japanese language , are influenced by linguistic properties such as phonology, orthography, and meaning. Of central interest was a hypothesized generalization process from synesthetic colors for graphemes, learned prior to acquisition of Kanji, to Kanji characters learned later. Results revealed that color choices for (...) Kanji characters depend on meaning and phonological information. Some results suggested that colors are generalized from Hiragana characters and Arabic digits to Kanji characters via phonology and meaning, respectively. Little influence of orthographic information was observed. The findings and approach of this study contributes to a clarification of the mechanism underlying grapheme-color synesthesia, especially in terms of its relationship to normal language processing. (shrink)

The Hurvich-Jameson (H-J) opponent-process network offers a familiar account of the empirical structure of the phenomenological color space for humans, an account with a number of predictive and explanatory virtues. Its successes form the bulk of the existing reasons for suggesting a strict identity between our various color sensations on the one hand, and our various coding vectors across the color-opponent neurons in our primary visual pathways on the other. But anti-reductionists standardly complain that the systematic parallels discovered by the (...) H-J network are just empirical correspondences, constructed post facto, with no predictive or explanatory purchase on the intrinsic characters of qualia proper. The present paper disputes that complaint, by illustrating that the H-J model yields some novel and unappreciated predictions, and some novel and unappreciated explanations, concerning the qualitative characters of a considerable variety of color sensations possible for human experience, color sensations that normal people have almost certainly never had before, color sensations whose accurate descriptions in ordinary language appear semantically ill-formed or even self-contradictory. Specifically, these "impossible" color sensations are activation-vectors (across our opponent-process neurons) that lie inside the space of neuronally possible activation-vectors, but outside the central 'color spindle' that confines the familiar range of sensations for possible objective colors. These extra-spindle chimerical-color sensations correspond to no reflective color that you will ever see objectively displayed on a physical object. But the H-J model both predicts their existence and explains their highly anomalous qualitative characters in some detail. It also suggests how to produce these rogue sensations by a simple procedure made available in the latter half of this paper. The relevant color plates will allow you to savor these sensations for yourself. (shrink)

Determinants of synesthetic color choice for Japanese phonetic characters were studied in six Japanese synesthetes. The study used Hiragana and Katakana characters, which represent the same set of syllables although their visual forms are dissimilar. From a palette of 138 colors, synesthetes selected a color corresponding to each character. Results revealed that synesthetic color choices for Hiragana characters and those for their Katakana counterparts were remarkably consistent, indicating that color selection depended on character-related sounds and not visual form. This (...) Hiragana–Katakana invariance cannot be regarded as the same phenomenon as letter case invariance, usually reported for English grapheme-color synesthesia, because Hiragana and Katakana characters have different identities whereas upper and lower case letters have the same identity. This involvement of phonology suggests that cross-activation between an inducer brain region and that of the concurrent area in grapheme-color synesthesia is mediated by higher order cortical processing areas. (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)

We are concerned here with recursive function theory analogs of certain problems in chromatic graph theory. The motivating question for our work is: Does there exist a recursive (countably infinite) planar graph with no recursive 4-coloring? We obtain the following results: There is a 3-colorable, recursive planar graph which, for all k, has no recursive k-coloring; every decidable graph of genus p ≥ 0 has a recursive 2(χ(p) - 1)-coloring, where χ(p) is the least number of colors which will (...) suffice to color any graph of genus p; for every k ≥ 3 there is a k-colorable, decidable graph with no recursive k-coloring, and if k = 3 or if k = 4 and the 4-color conjecture fails the graph is planar; there are degree preserving correspondences between k-colorings of graphs and paths through special types of trees which yield information about the degrees of unsolvability of k-colorings of graphs. (shrink)

How deeply does action influence perception? Does action performance affect the perception of object features directly related to action only? Or does it concern also object features such as colors, which are not held to directly afford action? The present study aimed at answering these questions. We asked participants to repeatedly grasp a handled mug hidden from their view before judging whether a visually presented mug was blue rather than cyan. The motor training impacted on their perceptual judgments, by (...) speeding participants’ responses, when the handle of the presented mug was spatially aligned with the trained hand. The priming effect did not occur when participants were trained to merely touch the mug with their hand closed in a fist. This indicates that action performance may shape the perceptual judgment on object features, even when these features are colors and do not afford any action. How we act on surrounding objects is therefore not without consequence for how we experience them. (shrink)

The Dangerous Book for Boys Abstract: Seventeenth and eighteenth century discussions of the senses are often thought to contain a profound truth: some perceptible properties are secondary qualities, dispositions to produce certain sorts of experiences in perceivers. In particular, colors are secondary qualities: for example, an object is green iff it is disposed to look green to standard perceivers in standard conditions. After rebutting Boghossian and Velleman’s argument that a certain kind of secondary quality theory is viciously circular, we (...) discuss three main lines of argument for the secondary quality theory. The first is inspired by an intuitively compelling picture of perception articulated by Reid; the second is that the secondary quality theory is a conceptual truth; the third line of argument is presented in Johnston’s influential paper ‘How to speak of the colors’. We conclude that all these arguments fail, and that the secondary quality theory is unmotivated. Keywords: color, secondary quality, disposition, vision, perception.. (shrink)

The Congress for Cultural Freedom is remembered as a paramount example of the “cultural cold wars.” In this paper, I discuss the ways in which this powerful transnational organization sought to promote “science studies” as a distinct – and politically relevant – area of expertise, and part of the CCF broader agenda to offer a renewed framework for liberalism. By means of its Study Groups, international conferences and its periodicals, such as Minerva, the Congress developed into an influential forum for (...) examining the ways Big Science impacted the relations between science, society, and politics, thus constituting a semi-institutional niche for Science Studies before its professionalization within academia during the 1970s. I argue that the Congress contributed to the construction of public space in which the relations between science, society and politics were debated, and science was reconceptualized as a social activity. The vision of “science studies” the CCF-associated intellectuals promulgated was different from the science studies we know today. Yet, this alternative vision, in which the issues of science politics appeared inseparable from those of science policy, science organization, and science governance, constituted the “pre-history” of science studies today. (shrink)

The Congress for Cultural Freedom is remembered as a paramount example of the “cultural cold wars.” In this paper, I discuss the ways in which this powerful transnational organization sought to promote “science studies” as a distinct – and politically relevant – area of expertise, and part of the CCF broader agenda to offer a renewed framework for liberalism. By means of its Study Groups, international conferences and its periodicals, such as Minerva, the Congress developed into an influential forum for (...) examining the ways Big Science impacted the relations between science, society, and politics, thus constituting a semi-institutional niche for Science Studies before its professionalization within academia during the 1970s. I argue that the Congress contributed to the construction of public space in which the relations between science, society and politics were debated, and science was reconceptualized as a social activity. The vision of “science studies” the CCF-associated intellectuals promulgated was different from the science studies we know today. Yet, this alternative vision, in which the issues of science politics appeared inseparable from those of science policy, science organization, and science governance, constituted the “pre-history” of science studies today. (shrink)

This paper examines the color symbolic values in two different and unrelated languages, Arabic and English. It analyses the colors mentioned in the Qur’an semiotically and their translation based on Peirce’s semiotic model of sign interpretation, while considering the socio-cultural differences that influence the understanding and rendering of color signs, informed by corpus-based analysis. Although the Qur’an contains the most basic colors like other languages, the semiotic values of some colors are different. The study shows that (...) class='Hi'>colors in the Qur’an, and Arabic in general, are tightly linked to the environment and culture of the early Muslims who received the Qur’an first-hand from the Prophet. These colors as situated in their culture could appear positively or negatively to users in other languages in a way that is not intended in the source text. Therefore, the translator’s awareness of the socio-cultural signs could bridge the gap between the different systems of codification and recodification of signs. (shrink)

Realists about color, be they dispositionalists or physicalists, agree on the truth of the following claim: (R) x is red iff x is disposed to look red under standard conditions. The disagreement is only about whether to identify the colors with the relevant dispositions, or with their categorical bases. This is a question about the representational content of color experience: What kind of properties do color experiences ascribe to objects? It has been argued (for instance by Boghossian and Velleman, (...) 1991) that truths like (R) cannot be used in an account of the colors as they would result in ‚circular’, and therefore empty, contents. It has also been argued (for instance by Harman, 1996) that switching to an account of color in terms of a functional account of color sensations would result in a circular, and therefore empty, account. In this paper, I defend a realist account of color in terms of a (non-reductive) functional account of color sensations. Such an account of sensations has been suggested by Pagin (2000), and it can be applied to color sensations without the resulting account of the colors themselves being circular or empty. I argue that the so-called transparency of experience does not provide any argument against such an account. I also argue that on such an account, the issue of physicalism vs. dispositionalism boils down to the question of the modal profile of the color concepts. (shrink)

In his Time and Narrative, Ricœur introduces the term of “third time” to designate the middle ground between human and natural time. This time is synonymous with historical time, which is the main source of historical discourse. The third time consists of inscribing human time onto the time of nature. While historiography must strictly follow this structure, works of fiction have the freedom to explore and even create imaginative variations of time. Despite the constraints this seems to impose on historical (...) writing, this article shows that even within the tight structure of historical time, a palette of various colors and shades, akin to imaginative variations, can be observed. Historical time possesses depth and speed; it can contract and relax, motivate or prevent action, or gain various dynamics in relation to the ending it offers. (shrink)