Colour as a Secondary Quality1 (original) (raw)
Related papers
1989
The Galilean Intuition Does modern science imply, contrary to the testimony of our eyes, that grass is not green? Galileo thought it did: Hence I think that these tastes, odors, colors, etc., on the side of the object in which they seem to exist, are nothing else than mere names, but hold their residence solely in the sensitive body; so that if the animal were removed, every such quality would be abolished and annihilated. Nevertheless, as soon as we have imposed names on them, particular and different from those of the other primary and real accidents, we induce ourselves to believe that they also exist just as truly and really as the latter.2 [S]ince in fact we apply color predicates to physical objects and never to sensations, ideas, experiences, etc., the account of their semantics recommended by the Principle of Charity is one that makes them truly applicable to tomatoes and lemons rather than to sense experiences thereof.3
Colour as a Secondary Quality Author(s
The Galilean Intuition Does modern science imply, contrary to the testimony of our eyes, that grass is not green? Galileo thought it did: Hence I think that these tastes, odors, colors, etc., on the side of the object in which they seem to exist, are nothing else than mere names, but hold their residence solely in the sensitive body; so that if the animal were removed, every such quality would be abolished and annihilated. Nevertheless, as soon as we have imposed names on them, particular and different from those of the other primary and real accidents, we induce ourselves to believe that they also exist just as truly and really as the latter.2 [S]ince in fact we apply color predicates to physical objects and never to sensations, ideas, experiences, etc., the account of their semantics recommended by the Principle of Charity is one that makes them truly applicable to tomatoes and lemons rather than to sense experiences thereof.3
Phenomenology in Japan, 1998
Do things look red, because they are red? Or are things red, because they look red? Naive realists would answer positively to the first question, and idealists positively to the second. But since Galileo natural scientists have provided a more radical answer: If there were no human beings, there would be no colors on the earth. To be exact, there are no colors in the objective world, and things in the world have no color. Colors are only subjective phenomena, like "hallucinations." Husserl has taken a very clear stance against this "scientific realism" concerning so called "secondary" qualities or "qualia," such as colors, sounds, and so on. Colors are "sensory qualities": they are not to be confused with "sense data," but are to be taken as "properties of objects which are really perceived in these properties" (Krisis, p. 28). Therefore, according to Husserl, there are colors in the world, at least in the lifeworld. But how do they exist? This is the question that I would like to take up in this paper.
Colour (in Philosophy Compass)
The view that physical objects do not, in fact, possess colour properties is certainly the dominant position among scientists working on colour vision. It is also a reasonably popular view among philosophers. However, the recent philosophical debate about the metaphysical status of colour properties seems to have taken a more realist turn. In this article I review the main philosophical views – eliminativism, physicalism, dispositionalism and primitivism - and describe the problems they face. I also examine how these views have been classified, and suggest that there may be less disparity between some of these positions than previously thought.
Colour and knowledge - Thoughts on a history of perception or evolution of colors
GesprächsStoff Farbe, 2016
Colour and knowledge-Thoughts on a history of perception or evolution of colors In his book The Appearances of Colors (1911), David Katz states that the causes of the existing distortions within the science of colors are primarily "the variety of viewpoints from which one can approach the problem of color (the physical, technical, physiological, psychophysical, psychological, aesthetic perspective) " 1 Katz thus names a problem that was not only known at the beginning of the 20th century, but a dilemma that continues to this day, namely the apparent blurring of the subject area "color", which means that up to our time no clearly defined color science with clear Could develop scope and well-founded methodology. Would you be able to imagine one for a moment-what would it look like? Would it be more oriented towards physics or physiology, psychology or even ecology? Would it be a pure science at all or would a science of color not have to integrate concepts from the humanities, art, culture and language sciences as well? Wouldn't it be an impossibility at the same time, a homeless chimera of unclear affiliation and methodology, a disciplinary bastard whose epistemological approaches would have to question the sovereignty of the sciences that produced it? Yes! The essay at hand attempts to characterize the seemingly inherent disobedience, which to this day prevents a firm disciplinary attribution, as a human-related, twofold anthropological illusion and thus to resolve it. The colors, understood as human experiences, penetrate to the very foundations of epistemology and thus the sciences, because they literally show us the evolutionary-ecological condition of our sensual approaches to the world. Just as no biologist would come up with the idea today of wanting to explain the form and function of an organism without using its evolutionary and ecological history, it makes little sense to make human perceptions independent of the both sensory-physiological and ecological roots of their development consider. Accordingly, the essay wants to understand perceptions and thus also color as an inner phylogenetic echo of certain information from an external environment and includes in this conception the evolutionarily proven ways of acting of living beings. In a second step, this approach of perception-specific limitation to the question of what is possible for us to understand is to be applied before the consequences of this can be illustrated by some scientific-historical considerations. I. Information, Environment, Perception "How is it that we know this world?" 2 Gerhard Vollmer in his article ‚Between biology and philosophy' and answers this question with reference to the ‚Evolutionary epistemology'. Accordingly, "thinking and recognizing are achievements of the human brain, and this brain originated in biological evolution." 3 As simple and obvious as this consideration may be, it is difficult, indeed impossible for us, the limitations of our own perception and thereby also recognizing what is possible for us to recognize. If thinking and knowing should have arisen in a historically unique and different process for each species, we still have to ask ourselves what we can actually perceive from the world around us and how "true", in the sense of objective, we allowed to hold this perceived? From an evolutionary perspective, the question of "what" inevitably leads to the question of "why" we perceive the world in this way and not in a different way, thereby emphasizing the importance of the information we perceive for our species? In perceptual psychology, perception means "the activity of taking up (and processing) information about objects and events in the environment into the brain of a living being" 4. However, this inconspicuous definition harbors one of the basic epistemological problems of philosophy since
Are Colors Secondary Qualities?*
Primary and Secondary Qualities, 2011
Color is an affair of the mind, while light is purely physical, but you cannot have one without the other. The Dangerous Book for Boys à A remote ancestor of this paper was given at the Central APA in 2002; thanks to the commentator, Justin Broackes. Mark Kalderon provided much help with an even earlier version, as did others whom we have now forgotten. Thanks to an anonymous referee for comments on the penultimate draft.
Color properties and color ascriptions: a relationalist manifesto
2004
Upon examination, I find only one of the reasons commonly produc'd for this opinion to be satisfactory, viz. that deriv'd from the variations of those impressions, even while the external object, to all appearance, continues the same. These variations depend upon several circumstances. Upon the different situations of our health: A man in a malady feels a disagreeable taste in meats, which before pleas'd him the most.
The Myth of the Common-sense Conception of Colour
Shifting Concepts, 2020
Some philosophical theories of the nature of colour aim to respect a ‘common sense’ conception of colour: aligning with the common sense conception is supposed to speak in favour of a theory and conflicting with it is supposed to speak against a theory. This chapter argues that the idea of a ‘common sense’ conception of colour that philosophers of colour have relied upon is overly simplistic. By drawing on experimental and historical evidence, it demonstrates how conceptions of colour vary along several dimensions and how even supposedly ‘core’ components of the contemporary ‘common sense’ conception of colour are less stable than previously thought.
Some Thoughts in Philosophy of Color
Revista Mexicana de Fisica
Recibido el 26 de marzo de 2009; aceptado el 11 de septiembre de 2009 Some of the main current philosophical theories of color are briefly presented. Based on them and as an analogy, several hypothetical philosophies of heat are offered. Finally, after a discussion and criticism of the hypothetical philosophies of heat, a proposal is offered to deal with the problem of color which solves some of the troubles faced by some current philosophies of color. The limitations of this proposal are also mentioned and discussed Keywords: Color; philosophy of color; optics.