Metaphysics Of Color Research Articles

Perceptual Pragmatism and the Naturalized Ontology of Color.

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.

Metaphysics of Color 1: Physicalist Theories of Color

AbstractThis entry outlines physicalism about color, and objections to the effect that it cannot meet various desiderata on a metaphysics of color.

Metaphysics of Color 2: Non‐Physicalist Theories of Color

AbstractThis entry outlines relationalism, primitivism, and eliminativism about color and considers objections to each theory.

Kant's Race Theory, Forster's Counter, and the Metaphysics of Color

This article argues for an understanding of Kant's race theory as an integral part of his idea of nature and of humans in nature as presented in his Critique of the Power of Judgment (Kritik der Urteilskraft, 1790). It places an examination of Kant and Forster's debate over race, which was ignited in 1785 upon the publication of Kant's second essay on race, "Definition of a Concept of a Human Race" ("Bestimmung des Begriffs einer Menschenrace"), in the context of an illumination of the connections between aesthetics and anthropology in Kant's Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen, 1764) and Forster's Voyage round the World (Reise um die Welt 1777). Forster responded to Kant's new "race" classifications, which were based essentially on skin color, with "Still More about the Human Races" ("Noch etwas über Menschenraßen," 1786). This article shows that Kant then developed his scientific theory and his idea of a teleological nature as presented in his Critique of the Power of Judgment, at least in part, in order to provide a unifying theoretical basis for his race theory so that it could withstand the scrutiny of an empirical scientific method based on deductive logic, such as that advanced by Forster. While Forster's strict empiricism, perspectivism, and rejection of "race" as a scientific classification reflect an underlying, distinctly modern, concept of the natural world, Kant's nature, as presented in his third Critique, reveals a metaphysically-based structure supporting a universal cosmopolitanism, but veils a particular European perspective that allows a damaging global authority on difference.

The Quest for Reality: Subjectivism and the Metaphysics of Colour, by Barry Stroud.

The Quest for Reality: Subjectivism and the Metaphysics of Colour, by Barry Stroud.

Critical Notice

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes I am grateful to Jim O’Shea for reading the penultimate draft of this critical notice and making a number of stylistic adjustments. 1 Williams makes this distinction in the preface to his Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978), pp. 9–10. He elaborates it further in his 1994 essay ‘Descartes and the Historiography of Philosophy’, reprinted in B. Williams, The Sense of the Past: Essays in the History of Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), pp. 257–9. 2 Williams, ‘Descartes and the Historiography of Philosophy’, p. 257. 3 Even if it were close enough, it might still require a lot of interpretation. Historical distance is not the only relevant factor in these matters. As Mark Sainsbury has accurately noticed while discussing Soames’ work: ‘If time alone obscures, the contemporaries of Aristotle or Kant should have faced negligible interpretative problems’ (‘Scott Soames. Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century: Volume 1: The Dawn of Analysis’, Philosophical Studies, 129 (2006), p. 637). 4 T. Baldwin, G. E. Moore (London: Routledge, 1990), p. 156. It should be added that this fundamental monograph, as well as the vast secondary literature on early analytic philosophy, is ignored and unmentioned by Soames. 5 See Soames’ description of the objectives of his ‘philosophically and pedagogically’ motivated history of analytic philosophy (‘Précis of Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century, Volume 1, The Dawn of Analysis’, Philosophical Studies, 129 (2006), p. 605). 6 This statement is from Davidson’s short preface to E. LePore and B. P. McLaughlin (eds) Actions and Events: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), p. xi. 7 See, e.g., M. Dummett, Origins of Analytical Philosophy (London: Duckworth, 1993); P. Simons, ‘Whose Fault? The Origins and Evitability of the Analytic–Continental Rift’, International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 9 (2001), pp. 295–311. 8 ‘Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations’, originally published in 1954 and reprinted in P. F. Strawson, Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays (London: Methuen, 1974), p. 143. 9 Ibid., p. 143. 10 Although one may have reservations about some harsh judgments made by Peter Hacker about Soames’ book, he seems to be right in his charge that Strawson’s most important and representative work was omitted by Soames. See P. M. S. Hacker, ‘Soames’ History of Analytic Philosophy’, Philosophical Quarterly, 56 (2006), pp. 124–5. Soames’ rebuttal of this charge is rather unconvincing, and his conclusion that in spite of Strawson’s genuine accomplishments ‘his work did not reach the first rank’ (S. Soames, ‘Hacker’s Complaint’, Philosophical Quarterly, 56 (2006), p. 428) is nothing more than another confirmation of an observation made many years ago by H. L. A. Hart, namely that in America the work of Strawson is ‘ludicrously under‐rated’ (see N. Lacey, A Life of H. L. A. Hart: The Nightmare and the Noble Dream (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 180). 11 See, e.g., his programmatic 1975 paper ‘Can Analytical Philosophy be Systematic, and Ought it to Be?’ (published in M. Dummett, Truth and Other Enigmas (London: Duckworth, 1978), pp. 437–58) and his autobiographical remarks made during an interview included in M. Dummett, Origins of Analytical Philosophy, pp. 167–70. 12 T. Baldwin, Contemporary Philosophy: Philosophy in English since 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 107. This book, published as the eighth volume of the Oxford History of Western Philosophy, is an excellent example of a much less selective and less one‐sided account of the development of the analytic tradition than the one provided by the second volume of Soames’ book, even though it has far less space. 13 B. Stroud, The Quest for Reality: Subjectivism and the Metaphysics of Colour (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. ix–x. 14 W. Sellars, Science, Perception and Reality (London: Routledge, 1963), p. 1. Incidentally, Sellars is another analytic thinker who is absent from Soames’ history of analytic philosophy. Considering the recent revival of interest in the work of this important thinker, this omission makes Soames’ book already slightly out‐of‐date. 15 R. Rorty, ‘How Many Grains Make a Heap?’, London Review of Books, 27(2) (2005), quoted from the internet version available at: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n02/rort01_.html.

Do we have to be Realists about Colour in order to be able to attribute Colour Perceptions to Other Persons?

One of the main targets of Barry Stroud’s criticism in his recent book ‚The Quest for Reality. Subjectivism and the Metaphysics of Colour’ are eliminativist theories of colour which he regards as a version of the metaphysical project of the unmasking of colours (Stroud, 2000). According to this view, no physical objects have any of the colours we see them or believe them to have. However, although this error theory describes all our colour perceptions as illusory, and all our colour beliefs as false, it cannot deny that we actually perceive colours and that we do believe that physical objects are coloured. Therefore, it has to account for these psychological facts without relying on any assumptions about the colours of things. Thus, the central question for the unmasking project is whether it is possible to acknowledge someone’s perceiving a certain colour or having beliefs about the colours of things without holding that anything anywhere has any colour at all. Contrary to Stroud, this paper defends the view that we can acknowledge that people believe in colours without having ourselves to accept their existence.

Précis of The Quest for Reality*

Philosophy and Phenomenological ResearchVolume 68, Issue 2 p. 384-386 Précis of The Quest for Reality* BARRY STROUD, BARRY STROUD University of California, BerkeleySearch for more papers by this author BARRY STROUD, BARRY STROUD University of California, BerkeleySearch for more papers by this author First published: 29 May 2007 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2004.tb00349.x * Barry Stroud, The Quest for Reality: Subjectivism and the Metaphysics of Colour (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume68, Issue2March 2004Pages 384-386 RelatedInformation

Barry Stroud's The Quest for Reality: Subjectivism and the Metaphysics of Colour

Barry Stroud's <i>The Quest for Reality: Subjectivism and the Metaphysics of Colour</i>

Stroud, Colour, and Metaphysical Satisfaction

In The Quest for Reality, Subjectivism and the Metaphysics of Colour, Barry Stroud appraises various subjectivist theories of colour as they occur in the context of a philosophical project which he characterizes as the quest for reality. “It is meant to be a quest whose goal is the nature of reality—what the world is really like. And it involves distinguishing what is really so from what only appears to be so, or separating reality as it is independently of us from what is in one way or another dependent on us and so misleads us as to what is really there” (pp. 3–4). In a long metaphysical tradition, now more alive than ever, the systematic pursuit of the distinction finds colour on the misleading appearance and not-really-so side of things.

The Quest for Reality; Subjectivism and the Metaphysics of Colour

Book Information The Quest for Reality; Subjectivism and the Metaphysics of Colour. The Quest for Reality; Subjectivism and the Metaphysics of Colour Barry Stroud New York Oxford University Press 2000 xv + 228 Hardback By Barry Stroud. Oxford University Press. New York. Pp. xv + 228. Hardback:,